Planning & Transportation
The Durham-Orange Friends of Transit had its first organizational meeting last night. I had received no fewer than NINE separate invitations to go, so I figured I'd show up, especially since two of them were from completely separate elected officials, and personally extended to me directly (Ed Harrison and Alice Gordon).
A day after the elections for city-wide offices in Durham, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough several of our elected officials joined advocates for transit to publicly launch "DO Transit" - Durham Orange Friends of Transit. Thanks to Gerry Cohen for posting info about the kick-off meeting here on OP and for being there last night to help explain House Bill 148. The newly enacted legislation establishes the Congestion Relief and Intermodal Transportation 21st Century Fund, providing the Triangle with an unprecedented opportunity to build a robust transit system.
I recently saw Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy give an interesting speech on the problem that everyone seems to think that Chapel Hill was just perfect right about the time they got there. Kevin is not the first person to have observed this, and he won’t be the last, but I thought it might be interesting to share this item I stumbled across while researching an unrelated topic. R. L. Gray wrote an essay on Chapel Hill in the News & Observer (reprinted in
NC Journal of Law, Vol 1, pp 516-518, 1904):
"Let the man have been tarred with the University stick and he will tell you along with his after-dinner cigar that he has a notion of some day building a house at Chapel Hill – and there remaining to the end of the chapter in the one place where he believes he can obtain a large and perfect peace. There men cling to the town and its surroundings with a memory that is both tenacious and jealous of details.
As the county still scrambles to try to find a solution to the impending loss of all landfill space in Orange County, I was happily surprised by an article about mainstreaming the zero waste concept that appeared in today's New York Times. I recognize that the solid waste folks here in the county are way ahead of the game compared to other municipalities in North Carolina, but I wonder if we should be pushing them harder as a community to approach zero waste. I'll admit to being a bit ignorant about the current philosophy of the solid waste authority, so perhaps they are already pushing this. But I have been dismayed by the fact that we do not yet have a small business and residential composting program that can handle organic wastes for those who don't have the option of composting on site. At the very least, it seems like such a program is necessary for capturing food waste from cafeterias, restaurants, and businesses with more than 10 or so employees. I've set up a worm composting bin at work, but I don't believe most workplaces would be willing to go to that length to create a smaller waste st
I read the Town Council candidates' responses to the
League of Women Voters' questionnaire in the Chapel Hill News this morning. (A valuable service, but shouldn't the CHN actually publish reporting on the front page?) I noticed that the candidates were unanimous in their support for putting increased density (if it happens) in transit corridors, but not a single one of them named an appropriate area or an example of how this should be done.
It's easy to be reactionary and rail against tall buildings and vague notions of density or against East 54 in particular. Where are the courageous candidates that can hammer out policies, make the hard decisions, and stand up to the inevitable complaints about change? Evolution of this community's landscape is not optional. We must put on our thinking caps and establish some direction for doing this in the best way for our collective future.
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